Manchester's Jazz Festival will see performers from 20 separate countries play in venues dotted around the city later this month.
More than 37,000 people attended last year's festival and similar numbers are expected for 2012's festival, which begins on 13 July.
The audience will be boosted as a result of a new Manchester Jazz Festival internet radio station which will make it accessible to those who can't attend in person.
The internet radio station is the result of a collaboration between the festival organisers and the music streaming service Deezer, which will play a selection of tracks including highlights from the last five years. Competitions will take place to win tickets for this year's festival, which continues until 21 July.
Steve Mead, the artistic director of the festival, said: "MJF are thrilled to announce this new partnership with Deezer and to become the first major UK jazz festival to launch an internet radio channel. It's an exciting and invaluable platform for providing a taster of our distinctive programme of music. As well as featuring artists appearing at the 2012 event, we've dipped back into the festival archives from the last five years to produce a playlist that epitomises MJF."
Some of the concerts will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3's Jazz on Three and Radio 6 Music.
Highlights of the festival include two world premières specially commissioned for the festival:
- George King's Songs of the Caged Bird. The Manchester-based pianist-composer has produced a new song-cycle for soprano and the strings section of the Manchester Camerata, setting to music poems, speeches and sermons from the US civil rights period. The libretto includes a re-setting of the lyrics to Strange Fruit, as well as works by Maya Angelou and Langston Hughes.
- Pete Moser's "Sound Games" will see an octet performing music inspired by athleticism, including a 10 second counterpoint for a 100 metre run and a series of "long jump solo journeys."
As usual there is a strong international element to the festival, with at least 20 nationalities being represented this year. The European Union Quintet features a tenor sax from the Netherlands, a German guitarist, a Slovakian drummer and pianist and double bass from the UK. Also performing is the Beating Wing Orchestra, a Manchester-based collective made up mostly of musicians from the area who are refugees, originally formed for the 2007 Manchester International Festival. At the moment the orchestra includes musicians originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Brazil, China, Iraq and Bangladesh.
The pavilion in Albert Square will be the centre of the festival, with concerts taking places in other venues across Manchester, from the Royal Northern College of Music and St Ann's Church – the Grade I listed sandstone neo-classical building which celebrates its 300th birthday during the festival – to Matt and Phred's lively jazz club in the Northern Quarter.
The festival is supported by the Arts Council and by Manchester city council.
